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Comment by domador | Hacker News Reader

I've been using the ribbon UI in Office frequently for years, and still find its usability inferior to the old menu system. Aside from its poor usability, I dislike the visual clutter of having all the functions visible all the time. Personally, I'm less productive thanks to the ribbon UI.

Well, what do I know... I'm just one data point... probably an outlier.

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The thing I hate about the ribbon is that it's not linear - you can't scan it like a drop-down menu. It's a lot harder to find something if you don't already know where it is.

You know you can disable the ribbon so it's not shown unless you click the "drop" it like you would a menu, right?

IME there is a strong divide in opinions on the Ribbon interface. Almost all "everyday users" I know came down in favour after getting used to it. Most of the "power users" found it frustrating.

Given that the former group is much, much larger in practice, it's hard to blame Microsoft for making the switch, even if it does invite strong and vocal criticism from some people with legitimate gripes. I suppose this is the inevitable burden of designing some the most widely used business software on the planet.

Honestly, I think MS should've learned from what they did on the desktop: just give me a big searchable menu and the power to pin things onto the bar. Everybody's workflow is different.

And while the groupings of various formatting and editing tools is sensible, their constant mucking with the "File" menu is inscrutable and frustrating.

I used to always make a custom toolbar with the items I frequently used. Then later, when I had to, I would go into the menu to find the other items I needed. It was nice having familiar icons for my most-used functions and then having text-based labels neatly organized in the menu for the other functions.

The way the ribbon had it all (or lots of items I didn't regularly use) always visible irritated me and made it hard to quickly find the things I wanted without wading through the things I didn't. I've gotten used to it somewhat and I no longer keep Office 2003 installed, but I still end up searching for ways to do things now and again.

You can still add a bunch of functions to the "quick access toolbar" which is still open at the top of the screen even if you minimize the ribbon.

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